Sunday, September 16, 2012

The B

The man you see pictured in the photo above is a real life superhero. His superpower is being real. Until I met him I didn’t know a man could have this power.

We met at work in 1997. It took a while to wrangle him into a date but I finally did. To quote Bogey in The Big Sleep, “She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up,” Well, that’s what I did to him and then one day it finally paid off. I won’t go into every detail but we had a time getting started.

By the time I found him I had dated what seemed like every other man in all surrounding counties. So many folks I can’t even remember half of the names. Every date was pretty much the same. We’d go out to eat and then they would spend the evening telling me how wonderful they were trying to wow me and I’d counter bits of the same type info to appear like I was interested. Usually that was the end of it on my part. I wanted a man who was real not just one who told me he was. Here comes B swimming out in front of this sea of other men and it was on.

On one of our first dates he left me standing in the rain while he unlocked his car door. got inside, put the keys in the ignition and then finally remembered my drowning ass in the rain and opened my door from his nice dry seat. That is probably when I knew for sure. I was smiling from ear to ear when I got in. This was the first time at the start of a relationship that a man didn’t try to impress me. He was then and still is just as he is. We never had that awkward first date type conversation. It just seemed like from the beginning we got each other.

It took a couple of breakups for us to figure out that we didn’t want to be apart and then we got married in 2001.

Here is the key to being in a marriage for that long and not ever fighting. We made the commitment on the front end that we would never try to change each other. We said if there was something we didn’t like about the other we would get over it. How important is putting the cap back on the toothpaste and other silly things people fight over? If you want the cap on the toothpaste and he doesn’t care if it’s on just put it on yourself. If you what your socks folded a certain way and she refuses to learn the way, fold them yourself. The thing we are talking about here is that your way is just that, YOUR WAY. Other people have their way and they should be allowed that. I guess that is the secret to our success. It just works for us that way.

In all my life I have never felt as loved for being exactly who I am as he makes me feel and I hope he can say the same.